What are the top Legal Tech trends for 2021 according to Gartner?

Top Legal Tech Trends

In the coming years, corporate legal departments are aiming to increase productivity by reducing response time and improving the allocation of human resources and technology.

Legal chatbots, the rise in demand for legal technology experts, third party risk management consolidation and the drive to automate compliance with growing privacy regulation is hot! Gartner, a global research and advisory firm providing information, advice, and tools for leaders in legal and compliance (amongst other business areas), published its Legal Tech Trends for this year. This is what you need to know.

Companies must invest in legal technology more aggressively — but more importantly, they must invest more effectively. Otherwise, legal and compliance functions will remain a drag on productivity and responsiveness.

Zack Hutto, Director, Advisory in Gartner.

Virtual legal Assistants (VLAs), or AI-powered chatbots for business are on the rise as the pressure within legal departments to become more efficient increases. In the coming years, corporate legal departments are aiming to increase productivity by reducing response time and improving the allocation of human resources.  It is worth highlighting here that the success of VLAs relies on how corporate legal and compliance experts involved in the implementation process and the ultimate creation of solutions meet their company’s specific needs.

In a recent publication, Gartner predicted that by 2023, 33% of corporate legal departments will have a dedicated legal technology expert to support the automation of core in-house workflows. At present, there is a gap between those who have the legal expertise and those who have the tech know-how. Those with both sets of skills will have tremendous opportunities as digital transformation in the areas of law and compliance gathers pace and the demand for hybrid roles increases.

Third party risk management consolidation

Digital transformation exposes greater risks associated with third parties. According to Gartner, third-party risk management (TPRM) today is fragmented across different divisions within companies. As no-code and digitization become part of daily life, there will be a greater need for organizations to leverage compliance process automation in order to mitigate these risks and avoid something falling through the cracks.

Privacy Tech: privacy regulations will drive automation

As privacy regulations offer consumers more rights companies will need to prepare themselves for more consumer claims.  The Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), have already created a significant number of requests from consumers. Following Gartner’s prediction, by 2023, there will be a 150% increase in internal legal counsel investment in dedicated solutions to handle subject rights requests (SRRs) on behalf of clients. Automation will play a key role in making the process faster and more efficient.

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